


Like Gold to Airy Thinness Beat

by dorian_burberrycanary



Category: A Discovery of Witches (TV)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode 1.06, Episode Tag, Established Relationship, F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-29
Updated: 2018-11-29
Packaged: 2019-09-02 00:44:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16776226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dorian_burberrycanary/pseuds/dorian_burberrycanary
Summary: Diana climbs into his lap and his hands immediately come up to steady her. The book he’d been reading slides off the bed with a thud. Her fingers are clumsy as she works down the line of buttons—she doesn't think about why, doesn't care—and, finally, she can touch his cool skin. (Episode tag for 1.06.)





	Like Gold to Airy Thinness Beat

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tam867](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=tam867).



> Thanks to my incredible and very patient betas, @mycaptainswanjones and @village-skeptic, for all their help. This fic is immeasurably better because of you! For @tam867, who gave me the idea for this story <3

  
  


Diana wakes to warmth and dark sheets wrapped around her body. Her dream vanishes in confused fragments, lost in the afternoon light that falls through the arched windows. But her shoulders stay tense and the tangle of dread in her chest refuses to loosen.

Next to her, Matthew sits up against the headboard, reading a thin volume covered with gilt lines.

She had fallen asleep alone while he arranged their travel to Madison. Home.

Diana closes her eyes and tries to picture him in the house she grew up in with its slanted gables, not quite straight walls and bunches of dried flowers hanging from the kitchen ceiling. She reaches out with her unscarred hand until the backs of her fingers press against his leg and feels Matthew's gaze settle on her like the first soft accumulation of snowfall.

She looks up, blinking the sleep out of her eyes, and he closes the volume, keeping his place with one finger between the pages.

Diana brushes her knuckles back and forth against his leg. "What time is it?"

“A little after three. You haven’t been asleep long.” 

But she had slept most of the morning, too, and as much of last night as she could. She is sick of waking to find stretches of hours gone.

She pushes up onto her elbows even though the motion makes her hips and her left arm ache where she’d landed hard on the uneven flagstones yesterday. Scar tissue pulls tight across her shoulder blades.

The restless energy that she usually pours into hours of running or rowing is already building under her skin. But the familiar jittery feeling is now mixed with bright flickers of magic that glance along the edges of her thoughts and pulse in her veins like a phantom heartbeat.

Sarah had always said that magic and desire were the same, bound together, but Diana could never understand how the flashes of so foreign a power, that came and went as it chose, could touch her heart.

All this time, she hadn’t missed magic. She hadn’t cared about the politics of creature-kind when none of their feuds or disagreements touched her life.

_What did I do that was so horrible that someone would spellbind—_

She leans over to kiss Matthew’s arm. Even through the fabric of his shirt, she can feel the slight chill of his body against her lips.

_Who did I hurt?_

Diana pushes herself up, kneeling next to him on the bed despite her bruised knees. She reaches out, watching his face. When she slides open the topmost button of his shirt, she sees more concern than desire, though to her relief he doesn’t look reluctant or indifferent. She remembers how it felt to kiss him as he held himself stiff and still under her touch, but so much has changed since then.

She climbs into his lap and his hands immediately come up to steady her. The book he’d been reading slides off the bed with a thud. Her fingers are clumsy as she works down the line of buttons—she doesn't think about why, doesn't care—and, finally, she can touch his cool skin.

She bends forward to kiss along the sharp line of his collarbone out to the curve of his shoulder while she manages the small hooks of his slacks and pulls down the zipper. Her hands slide from his waist up, over the sweeping arc of his ribcage and the raised scars that interrupt the smooth planes of his chest.

Matthew pushes her unruly hair back where it has fallen forward and brushes a gentle kiss over the less bruised side of her forehead.

Trapped in that ruined castle, she hadn't been able to defend herself. And, like a muted echo, Diana can still hear the tap of Satu’s fingers on the casting drum and, as soon as she closes her eyes, she can smell the layers of her skin peeling off, burnt away by a blaze of magic.

The star and crescent moon on her back—

Diana straightens just long enough to pull her shirt over her head even though the motion hurts her. 

She frames Matthew's face with her hands and kisses him, giving a satisfied hum when his mouth opens for her. He tenses a little but lets her kiss him like this. He makes himself soft and responsive to her lead, so different from how he lifted her and dropped her onto the bed in the wavering glow of candlelight.

Diana’s thumbs sweep over his cheekbones as she presses her tongue into his mouth. The kiss turns messy and wet in a way she isn’t even sure if he likes, but _oh_ —the thought of pushing past the concealing surface of his manners and his restraint to put her thumbprints all over the heart of him, here, where only she can see. She takes and takes until she feels almost weightless as though she could lift her arms up, tip her head back and transport herself to somewhere safe.

Matthew's hands spread across the small of her back. Desire curls hot and sharp inside her at the way his hands span over her body. She wants to fuck him. She wants to kiss him gentle and slow until she drives them both frantic—to make love to him like she could pour her whole self into the press of their bodies together. She wants his hands, his mouth, to get lost in how her body feels with his, in what he does to her.

His right hand cups her hip before sliding down the curve of her stomach, but he pauses at the line of her underwear until she opens her eyes. Watching him watch her this close, seeing the green-gold flecks in his blue eyes and everything that gathers behind his gaze when he looks at her like this is too much. She closes her eyes again and lets her head fall back as she guides his hand down between her legs.

He pushes her underwear aside and slides his fingers inside her. He is careful but less cautious, repeating what made her shiver and bite her lips when he had first touched her a day and a half ago, back when the stone walls of Sept-Tours around them had felt so secure.

His thumb presses on her clit as his fingers flex and then spread a little. Her hands tighten on his shoulders. She rocks forward into his touch and her response makes him spread her further open. She gives a soft moan of encouragement against his lips that she knows sounds weak and desperate, and he pushes in another finger. He mirrors back the messy, urgent kisses she had pressed into his mouth as though he could tell how much she liked, how much she wanted—

“Shh. Hey,” he pulls back just enough to whisper. “That’s it. Diana, take what you need.”

She hears a blur of rounded-off, rolling words in not-quite-French which sound like endearments. But she can't focus enough to trace the connections between old and new. What does it even matter—she knows what he feels, what she is to him now. She isn't alone in facing this staggering rush of love and lust, not anymore.

Diana bends forward, hiding her face against his neck and at last she stops ignoring the raw, scared part of her that’s too tense to let him make this good for her—that is still trapped in that courtyard fighting back.

_Safe. He's always going to be safe._

Diana lets go, focuses on his mouth, on his dark eyelashes and lovely pale skin, the way his arm wraps around her and his fingers curl forward inside her as she sinks down, wanting him deeper. He follows the pace and movements of her body until all her dazed mind can think of is him as the shivery peak of her climax unfolds, scattering through her like waves of sparks in the dark.

The comedown is slow and hazy. Diana runs her hands through his hair and he hooks an arm around her hips, holding her close. She watches the long bowed line of his neck as he tenses and finishes against her flushed, languid body. She kisses his face and along the beautiful curve of his jaw as he comes with a sharp indrawn breath.

Heaven help the creature who tries to take him from her now.

His eyes are open and she brushes her thumb over his lips while he stares at her. This time she doesn't look away, even though she feels just as stripped open and pulled apart under his gaze as before.

His head tips to the side, considering her. He leans forward, touching their foreheads together and then, unexpectedly, he kisses the bridge of her nose. The sudden shift in mood pulls a breathy, startled laugh from her. Matthew gives a flicker of a smile that drops away.

"Are you all right?" he asks as his hands slide up and down her arms.

Her hips and knees hurt more than before, but she isn't about to say so.

“Yeah.” She leans in to kiss the tip of his nose in return, feeling silly and lighter, more like herself. “Yes,” she repeats, meaning _thank you_ and _I love you_ and _I will be_.

Diana lets him ease her down onto the bed though she could have managed on her own. He covers them with the sheet and pulls her onto his chest. His heart beats inhumanly slow under her ear.

_This is what his heart sounds like when it’s racing_ , she realizes. Diana drifts for a little, listening as his heartbeat drops back to his body's usual stillness.

The sunlight stretches out in longer slants as the autumn day burns through its final golden hours. Soon they’ll need to bathe and dress for dinner with Ysabeau and Marthe, who have been nothing but kind despite the trouble she brought to their home.

By this time tomorrow, they will be in Madison.

_Does Sarah know? Who did I hurt—_

She wants to climb back on top of Matthew, straddle his waist and start again, blanking out her mind over and over with how good he feels until her body is too exhausted for anything but sleep.

_What could I have done to deserve being spellbound?_

Diana stays in his arms, turning her face into his chest and breathes in the smell of his skin, which she liked from the very beginning. She remembers the way he'd held up his coat for her to step into and then folded back the sleeves, all without touching her. How his arms had felt around her on the floor of the Bodleian among the knocked down books and scattered loose papers. 

How last night he had called down to her in the dark and then steadied her on the lip of the hole she'd been cast into after she'd found within herself the astonishing power of flight.

_I can need him_ , she thinks, _and still save myself._

She pictures the gatehouse in the early morning light when she had stopped short at the sight of him returning to her. Her pulse had raced with nerves and anticipation and so much hope when her fingers brushed against his, as though he were her reflection in some strange mirror set between them.

Diana lifts herself up on an elbow.

Matthew watches her. His fingertips slide just below the arc of the crescent moon seared into her skin, tracing out an exact echo of the shape.

She leans down to kiss him, knowing that he must understand this helpless longing—hungry and terrible and marvelous—that is wrapped around her bones, threaded into her lungs and curled up tight inside her heart.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr at [@burberrycanary](http://clktr4ck.com/qcg8).


End file.
